Online Journalism News

News round-up: Spot the stealth bomber courtesy of Google Maps

Great work at Der Spiegel, courtesy of Amy Gahran at Poynter.

Google's map tool in the US offers satellite pics of locations (unlike its UK counterpart, alas) and the clever chaps at Der Spiegel tracked down a Stealth bomber outside a US army base.

Seems that one went under the government's radar (boom boom) - but will no doubt be dutifully airbrushed out jolly soon.

• So Google won't name the sources for Google News? Couldn't some clever techie bash together a script that identifies sources by trawling Google's news pages? Just an idea.

I'd be quite happy to contribute by knocking up some pretty charts plotting any political, ethical or religious bias...

Nothing gets past you, eh?

• Emily Bell on Guardian Unlimited's futile annual attempts to get a parliamentary pass for its web journalists: "The level of disengagement would be funny if it were not so irritating." (Registration still required, darn it.)

RSS: essential, or not?

• Bit of a contradiction from Guardian Unlimited's Simon Waldman about RSS news feeds at the WAN conference:

"He predicted that RSS will become a standard and essential element of any successful news website due to the extremely positive reception of RSS by techies and, maybe more importantly, investors," reports the Editors' weblog (scroll down - the permalink's broken!).

Sounds about right. But then: "Newspapers need to consider RSS as an opportunity, not an obligation."

Bit of a red herring for the competition...

Newspaper sales down

• International newspaper sales rose by 2.1 per cent in the past year, says a new report by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN).

But looking a little more closely, sales in all but eight EU countries dropped; UK newspaper sales were down by 4.43 per cent on the year and down by 11.41 per cent since 2000.

New project for Piers

• Former Mirror editor Piers Morgan has bought UK Press Gazette for something approaching £1 million, prompting speculation that the title might move away from its staple coverage of the regional press towards national news and TV.

Random fact - my Dad used to teach his Mum art.

On your knees, boy

• You know how you see an unusual word once and then it keeps popping up again? This time it's 'genuflecting' - popped up in a crossword a few weeks ago and now it's here, in this waffly Register piece on wireless access in a church...

Comments? Email me.

Tags (click tag to find related articles; click icon for feed):
industry comment |

Sign up here for our free, daily email newsletter to get all the latest stories, jobs, tips and more.

Got a story? Email our news team: Laura Oliver; Judith Townend or telephone +44 (0)1273 384290. You can also follow us on Twitter: @journalismnews / @LauraOliver / @JTownend.